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A review by heteroglossia
The Spirit of Terrorism: And Other Essays by Jean Baudrillard
Baudrillard talks of terrorism beyond the parameters it is usually discussed in. You won’t find much mention of political or historical specificity or attempts to find causation or “meaning” in terrorism. For him, it is beyond a theory of “clash of civilizations,” beyond discussions of Good & Evil. Terrorism is meaningless, it is the extreme event, attempt, of those outside global power to humiliate by refusing to act in a way that can be logically understood. Terrorism is not “real” & therein lies its power & detriment – It is worse than real, “it is symbolic.”
I found his discussion on the spectacle of terrorism particularly interesting. How these deaths from the brutal act, the whole reality & brutality of the current system enters into some kind of system of spectacular exchange. “The media are part of the event, they are part of the terror,” ⠀⠀⠀
Some quotes that I felt really encapsulated things: ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀
“When global power monopolizes the situation to this extent, when there is such a formidable condensation of all functions in the technocratic machinery, and when no alternative form of thinking is allowed, what other way is there but a terroristic situational transfer? It was the system itself which created the objective conditions for this brutal retaliation. By seizing all the cards for itself, it forced the Other to change the rules. And the new rules are fierce ones, because the stakes are fierce. To a system whose very excess of power poses an insoluble challenge, the terrorists respond with a definitive act which is also not susceptible of exchange.”
"This is not, then, a clash of civilizations of religions, and it reaches far beyond Islam and America, on which efforts are being made to focus the conflict in order to create the delusion of a visible confrontation and a solution based on force. There is, indeed, a fundamental antagonism here, but one which points past the spectre of America (which is, perhaps, the epicentre, but in no sense the sole embodiment, of globalization) and the spectre of Islam (which is not the embodiment of terrorism either), to triumphant globalization battling against itself.”
I found his discussion on the spectacle of terrorism particularly interesting. How these deaths from the brutal act, the whole reality & brutality of the current system enters into some kind of system of spectacular exchange. “The media are part of the event, they are part of the terror,” ⠀⠀⠀
Some quotes that I felt really encapsulated things: ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀
“When global power monopolizes the situation to this extent, when there is such a formidable condensation of all functions in the technocratic machinery, and when no alternative form of thinking is allowed, what other way is there but a terroristic situational transfer? It was the system itself which created the objective conditions for this brutal retaliation. By seizing all the cards for itself, it forced the Other to change the rules. And the new rules are fierce ones, because the stakes are fierce. To a system whose very excess of power poses an insoluble challenge, the terrorists respond with a definitive act which is also not susceptible of exchange.”
"This is not, then, a clash of civilizations of religions, and it reaches far beyond Islam and America, on which efforts are being made to focus the conflict in order to create the delusion of a visible confrontation and a solution based on force. There is, indeed, a fundamental antagonism here, but one which points past the spectre of America (which is, perhaps, the epicentre, but in no sense the sole embodiment, of globalization) and the spectre of Islam (which is not the embodiment of terrorism either), to triumphant globalization battling against itself.”